Jane and the Ghosts of Netley jam-7

by Stephanie Barron

  I unclasped the gold crucifix, and pressed it into her palm. “Take this, Sophia. It belongs to your Monsignor.”

  She looked at it curiously. “But how did you come by it, Jane?”

  “I found it... among the ruins of Netley Abbey once, when I had gone there to paint.”

  I grasped her hand, and walked with her to the door — and saw her phaeton safely turned towards Samuel Street.

  Then I sat at the writing desk, chose a sheet of fine paper and a well-mended pen, and set down the substance of Mrs. Challoner’s conversation. It required but a few moments. When I had done, I raised my head and listened. The house was quiet: Martha, her ankle on the mend, had retired to her bedchamber; Mary was bathing her daughter in the kitchen, under the benevolent eye of Phebe. My mother might already be snoring over her needlework, though it was but six o’clock.

  I donned my pelisse, and went in search of Lord Harold.

  Chapter 28

  Setting the Snare

  5 November 1808, cont.

  “Good evening to ye, Miss Austen,” Fortescue the publican said truculently when I appeared at the Dolphin. “Are ye wanting his lordship?”

  “Indeed I am — but I know him to be much involved today, and should not presume to trouble him. Would you be so good as to convey this note on my behalf? The communication it contains is of an urgent nature.”

  The publican eyed my missive apprehensively.

  “You’ll have heard the news of the inquest?”

  “I was present throughout, as was my brother, Captain Frank Austen. I know that you have long held the Captain in esteem, Mr. Fortescue, and you should be happy to learn that my brother regards Lord Harold as worthy of the highest confidence.”

  Fortescue’s pale blue eyes shifted uneasily. “Folk do be saying as how that valet — the foreigner — is guilty of murder.”

  “Or perhaps of nothing worse than fleeing in fear of his life. Will you carry my letter to his lordship?”

  The publican studied my countenance, and the doubt lifted from his own. “His lordship’s just ordered dinner, ma’am. If you care to wait, I shall enquire whether he is receiving visitors.”

  I certainly cared to wait, and retired to the side parlour in which I had last seen Flora Bastable. It was lit this evening by a quartet of candles in pewter sconces; the early November dark had already fallen. Townsfolk hurried home along the chill pavings beyond the window, with their collars buttoned high and paper parcels tucked under their arms. I thought of the long, dreary winter — of soldiers slogging through mud and gore on the Peninsula, of Frank buffeted by brutal seas; of George and Edward shivering in the dormitories of Winchester College. A greater sense of oppression than I had lately known settled upon my soul, as though all the light in life was bound for London in the baggage-coach of Sophia Challoner.

  “Pray to follow me, miss,” said Fortescue from the door.

  He led me up two flights of the broad front stairs; Lord Harold should never be placed directly above the public rooms, where the noise and odour must penetrate the bedchamber. The Rogue had been situated instead at the rear of the edifice, well removed from the clatter of the stable yard, in a comfortable suite that encompassed a private parlour. This door Fortescue threw open with a flourish, and announced, “Miss Austen, m’lord!”

  It was a simple space, quite out of keeping with what I imagined to be his lordship’s usual style: a round deal table; four chairs; a dresser with a few serving pieces upon it; a poker and tongs propped near the hearth. A pug dog, done in Staffordshire, sat upon the mantel — Mrs. Hodgkin’s bit of whimsy, I conjectured. Lord Harold was established at the table, with a quantity of papers spread out before him. He was working in his shirtsleeves, his coat discarded upon a chair. Left to his own devices, without a valet, he must be inclined to the informal. A pair of spectacles perched on his nose, bringing age and wisdom of a sudden to his visage.

  “Jane. Have you dined?”

  “Thank you, sir — I have.”

  “A little wine, perhaps? Claret — Madeira—”

  “Port, this evening,” I said thoughtfully.

  Lord Harold smiled. “A bottle of your best Port, Fortescue, and two glasses.”

  “Very good, sir,” the publican replied with greater cordiality than before, and closed the door behind him. I began to remove my bonnet, acutely conscious — as I had been only once before, in his lordship’s carriage — of the intimacy that surrounds a man and woman confined in a small space.

  “Is your mother aware that you visit strange gentlemen in their rooms?” his lordship demanded abruptly.

  “As Mr. Fortescue apprehends that much, we may presume the fact will circulate through the town by the morrow.”

  “Then I commend you for bravery.”

  “Have you discovered Orlando?”

  “—No, though I searched every road out of this wretched place,” he answered bitterly. “I have been in the saddle nearly two hours, Jane, and intend to remount as soon as I have dined; but I have little hope of finding him. He has gone to ground somewhere, like a wounded fox.”

  “Or to sea, perhaps?”

  He removed the spectacles and stared at me.

  “That is how I should flee Southampton, my lord. The sea, after all, betrays no footprint of man or beast.”

  At that moment, Fortescue reappeared at his lordship’s door, burdened with a tray. A weary figure stood behind him, in a greatcoat splashed with mud.

  “Frank!” I cried. “Returned from Portsmouth, and not a moment too soon!”

  “Found the Captain in the stable yard, I did,”

  Fortescue explained, “and understood straightaway that it’s his sister he’ll be wanting. I’ve brought extra rations for the Captain, and no need to offer thanks.”

  Lord Harold rose, and clapped my brother on the shoulder. “Come in by the fire, man — you’re perishing of cold.”

  “I encountered rain seven miles from Portsmouth, and a long, wet road of it we made,”

  Frank said, and shook his sopping hat over the hearth. “However, a bit of weather does not signify. I delivered your message to the Admiralty telegraph, my lord — and waited only for a reply. Here it is.” He extended a letter sealed with wax. “I have no notion of the contents.”

  Lord Harold broke it open immediately, and surveyed the close-written lines.

  “Here’s rabbit stew,” Fortescue continued, “a bit of baked fish; warm bread; a wedge of cheese; and a quantity of peas. And the London papers, what’s fresh off the mail! And the Port, for the lady!”

  “Well done, Fortescue,” his lordship murmured.

  “Any friend of the Austens cannot ask for too much, and that’s a fact.” He beamed at Frank, glared severely at his lordship, and backed his way out of the room with his empty tray dangling.

  “My status has received an elevation,” Lord Harold observed drily. “I forgot that Southampton is your home, and not a mere way-station, as it so often proves for me. You have been acquainted with Fortescue for some time, I collect?”

  “Everyone knows Mr. Fortescue,” I replied, unwilling to relate the sad history of the Seagrave family, and the end it had found in the Dolphin. I could not revisit the place, however, without recalling that desperate period in our first Southampton winter, and the hard truths it had taught me of the naval profession.[28] “And, too, we have our Assemblies here in the winter months — the ballroom is not indifferent.”

  “And filled with every random officer so fortunate as to gain a bit of shore-leave! Dare you venture into such a place? I have an idea you are besieged!”

  Frank dragged a chair from the table near the fire, and proceeded to divest himself of boots and coat. “I confess I am equally surprised to discover my sister here, my lord, at such an hour of the evening. What drew you out of Castle Square, Jane?”

  “A matter of some urgency; but I would beg you both to take your meal while I relate the whole.”

  Lord Harold furni
shed me with a glass of wine, which I gratefully accepted; and as the minutes wore away in that comfortable room, and the good Port fired my veins, I told them of Sophia Challoner, and the Conte’s offer of marriage; of her petition for passage on a western-bound ship, and the mysterious companion Mr. Ord should carry with him.

  Lord Harold listened, and drove a knife into his cheese, and drank some of the wine with an expression of absorption, as though he heard my words less clearly than the thoughts that ran through his brain. When I had done, my brother whistled soft and low. “So the Jesuit and Ord must flee by dawn, is it?

  And I am to be the tool of their flight?”

  “And Mrs. Challoner is bound for London,” Lord Harold mused. “They are all of them concerned to distance themselves from Southampton — and in that, I read a warning, Captain. There will be trouble in Southampton tomorrow.”

  “Then we must prevent it, my lord.”

  “But how?” He thrust away his meal, half-eaten.

  “If we arrest Ord and the Jesuit tonight, we merely alert the Enemy of our vigilance. The attack itself will come from another quarter.”

  “One of the French prisoners, freed from the prison hulks at Spithead?” I enquired.

  “Very likely. But how do they intend to communicate? When shall the signal be given? Would that I might set Orlando upon their heels— We should then watch the rogues in secret, and follow where they led!”

  “We might still do so much,” I returned. “Do you know of a ship out of Portsmouth, Frank, bound for the Americas?”

  He frowned in consideration of my words, and then his brow cleared. “By Jove — the Adelphi is readying for Halifax! Captain Mead intends to haul anchor at about four o’clock, when the tide shall be on the flow.”

  “Halifax is never Baltimore — but in a moment of crisis, any landing will serve,” I said calmly. “Let us write to Sophia that her friends may have passage. Ord and the Jesuit shall consider themselves safe. We might then wait before the Vine, where Ord lodges, and as he quits the place—”

  “—follow him,” Lord Harold concluded softly. “I will warrant he makes direct for Netley Abbey, and the turret stair, where a lanthorn light shall serve as signal.”

  My brother rose and yawned wearily. “Jane, I should be much obliged if you were to inform Mary that I may not find my bed for some hours yet. Say that a matter of business detains me; and think of your friends, established for King and Country in a frigid coach, while you settle into your quilts, my girl!”

  “You must be joking. Do you really believe I intend to leave you?” I demanded.

  “But, my dear,” Lord Harold protested, “your brother is correct. You had much better turn for home, and await the issue of events.”

  I crossed to the writing desk placed against the far wall, and extracted a piece of paper and a pen.

  “Finish your dinner, sirs, while I write to my sister. I shall not be a moment.”

  A messenger galloped from the yard with my brother’s note for Mrs. Challoner, informing her that Captain Frank Austen extended his compliments, and would be delighted to secure the passage of her friends aboard the Adelphi, commanded by one Captain John Mead, and bound for Halifax at the four o’clock tide. Fortescue sent a kitchen boy to Castle Square with my letter to Mary. The fitful rain had passed, but the night was cold; I secured the advantage of hot coals for Lord Harold’s braziers, that we might not suffer from frostbite during our lengthy vigil.

  Amble, his lordship’s coachman, sat upon the box with his breath steaming in the air; but his master shook his head, and despatched his man back to the stable yard.

  “I do not like to make a show of the Wilborough arms about the streets. We shall travel tonight in one of Fortescue’s conveyances — and I shall drive it myself.”

  It was an open gig, and the braziers, however comforting, should soon lose their effect in the chill wind streaming over the box; but I forbore to comment, or protest that the Wilborough arms should mean little to either a Jesuit or an American. His lordship knew his business.

  We had assembled before the stable, and my brother was about to lift me into the gig, when a man sped in haste through the gates of the yard. “Lord Harold Trowbridge! Is Lord Harold within?”

  The voice, though charged with excitement, was yet further burdened with the mangling of vowels that heralded a foreigner. In the flickering light of the torches, I studied the man: brown-skinned, wideeyed, with a forelock of gleaming hair. Perhaps it was the play of flame and shadow that recalled his name; a face glimpsed through conflagration.

  “Jeremiah the Lascar!” I said aloud.

  Chapter 29

  What the Lascar Saw

  5 November 1808, cont.

  “Is that Dixon’s Lascar?” Frank asked me in surprise. “I have seen him some once or twice, at the Itchen Dockyard.”

  “But what has brought him here?” I whispered. Lord Harold stepped forward. “Good evening, my good man. I must beg to defer our conversation until tomorrow. I and my friends are about to quit this place on a matter of pressing business.”

  “My business is also urgent, m’lord,” Jeremiah said. “You will remember that when most honoured Dixon was killed, you said I am to come to you with informations? And you so kindly honoured me with your card, and the direction of this inn?”

  “I remember.” Lord Harold glanced about; the curious eyes of the ostlers were trained upon our party. “Lower your voice, man. There are ears everywhere, and some of them unfriendly.”

  “Well I know it. But I come to you now, and not to the fool of a magistrate, who cannot catch a hare when it pilfers his garden.”

  “You have learned something to the purpose?”

  Lord Harold enquired.

  “I have seen the very man! The villain in a cloak who slit old Dixon’s throat!”

  “Where, for the love of God?”

  “At the Itchen dock. He crept in by cover of darkness, not half an hour since, and made off with a skiff. There were several small boats, you see, undamaged by the fires; and it is a small matter to drag a skiff over the lock and launch it in the river.”

  “And this he did?”

  The Lascar nodded. “When he had gone, and I was sure to be safe, I looked out over the lock itself. He went downriver, in the direction of Southampton Water.”

  “And thence to the sea,” Frank muttered in frustration.

  “You’re certain it was the same man?” Lord Harold demanded. “The one you espied from your rooftop last week, when the seventy-four was fired?”

  “Certain as I breathe, sir.” Jeremiah shuddered.

  “Thanks be to Vishnu that he did not observe me — that he did not know I was alone in the yard — for certain sure he’d have treated me to a taste of his knife.”

  Lord Harold clapped the fellow on the back and reached for his wallet. “Our thanks, Jeremiah. Pray accept my first payment towards the restoration of the yard. And walk with care tonight: there are others who carry knives. Into the gig, my friends! We waste the hour!”

  • • •

  It was clear to us all that Mr. Ord was now immaterial; it was his companion in the dark cloak we desperately sought, and his decision to move by water must be instructive. He had long made a habit of lurking in one spot: the subterranean passage beneath Netley Abbey. We abandoned all notion of holding vigil near the Vine Inn, and made directly for the Itchen ferry, and the road towards the ruins.

  “If he intends to embark for the Americas,” Lord Harold said grimly, “then we must assume that the firing of a lanthorn signal is his purpose tonight. He shall make by water for the Abbey tunnel, and achieve the turret stair undetected. Once the signal is given, he will be joining Ord — and bent upon the Portsmouth road.”

  “We must not allow the devil to light his lamps,”

  Frank said, “for then the attack shall be set in train!”

  “Pray God we are not too late!”

  Lord Harold lashed the horses with
his whip, and subsided into silence, while the gig — poorly sprung and exposed to the night air — rattled hell-bent for the River Itchen. There we were in luck; the ferry stood ready and waiting on the Southampton side; and after a tedious interval when I thought I should scream aloud with impatience, the barge bumped against the nether shore. My brother sprang immediately to the bank. We surged up the hill, and clattered through Weston — a sleepy hamlet sparked by a few fires — and then, as we achieved West Woods, Lord Harold slowed the team to a walk.

  “We must go quietly now, and secure the gig at the far edge of this copse,” he murmured. “Jane — will you remain with the horses, while we walk the final half-mile?”

  “Never, sir.”

  Frank snorted aloud. “Jane and horseflesh do not suit, my lord. It is useless to persuade her.”

  The trees thinned; the darkness that encroached in the heavy wood, lightened ahead; and there, against the night sky, loomed the tumbled ruin of rock.

  “No moon,” Lord Harold muttered. “We divide the advantage thus: his movements are hidden; but so are ours.”

  He halted the gig, and Frank jumped down. In a trice, the horses were hobbled and a rock placed behind the wheels. Lord Harold drew a flat wooden case from the rear of the equipage: his matched set of duelling pistols. One he secured in his coat; the other he handed silently to Frank; and so we set off. Did the stolen skiff nose against the cliff’s foot below? Or had the Jesuit beached it already, and entered the subterranean passage? Would he move with ease, confident that his plans were undetected?

  We came upon the Abbey from the rear; the turret stair, blasted and exposed to the elements, rose up on the forward side. The ground was everywhere uneven, and I dreaded lest I should stumble in the course of that last treacherous walk; but the thought had no sooner entered my mind, than Lord Harold’s hand was extended, and silently gripped my own. And so we went on, Frank to the fore and our breathing almost suspended, so desperately did we guard our progress, until my brother stopped short and held out his hand.